The Skin You Inhabit
by YellowFlicker
Summary: He remembers himsefl more and more as he watches the security logs of the woman that used to be Marta Shearing – she calls herself Rebecca Gordon, owns her new identity with ease. She has shed skin after skin in the two years they've been apart, like a snake (like a taught her to). Remembers that he's been watching over her a long time. That had been the deal: a life for a life.
1. Chapter 1

Notes:

Ok, first of all, a disclaimer for the title - its an almost rip-off from the movie with the same title (in spanish, cause in english the translation is 'The skin i live in') from the director Pedro Almodovar.

Second, please bear with me through 2 moments of math: Bourne Ultimatum and Bourne Legacy were supposed to happen almost at the same time - which puts them in year 2007. The Avengers came out in 2012. Time gab between movies is 5 years, but in the story i have upped it to 8 (for credibility, mostly on Clint's character and status as an agent within SHIELD and an Avenger); 8 years is the timeframe during which Aaron Cross becomes Clint Barton. Ok - math over and out.

**1**.

Clint comes in walking at a decidedly leisurely pace, feet almost dragging. He's too drained to be truly pissed, but it's coming. The fact that for the last couple of weeks he hasn't been sleeping more than three hours a night – if he can even get any sleep at all – isn't really helping. He refuses his Doyle's suggestion to take meds for that. He trusts that old bat a much as he dares, enough to talk to her at least for half an hour, three days a week, but he had flat out refused any drug that would impair his sense. Doyle had merely nodded and moved on.

"You're early."

Nat's voice in the dark doesn't surprise him. She is in the deep shadows but he knew she was there the moment he stepped in his room. Beneath the trickle of perfume that is her scent when she is not on missions, she smells of leather, hot metal and cleaning oil.

Just came in from the range then.

"You're complaining?" but his tone is more flat than needling. He's already taking off his vest with lazy moves, but then when the leather and Kevlar starts being stubborn, he tugs more insistently, turning his irritation at it rather than keeping it mute.

Natasha doesn't say anything, but he can practically _feel_ her eyebrow arching.

"We were alerted about five minutes ago for a possible op. tomorrow."

Clint doesn't pause as he strips, leaving a trail of clothes leading to his room.

"You know I'm not cleared for the field."

The tiny movement in shadow is all he sees of her shrug. "It's just a sitting-in job; simple recon."

To get him outa SHIELD and his head for a while. Get him moving. It's not a bad call, overall.

Clint only hums in response. She waits. It feels like she has been waiting for the last two weeks, waiting for him to tell her what's eating at him.

He's not in the mood to talk though. He doesn't even know _what_ kind of mood he is in. Hawkeye, Clint, they are mixing together with names from a past that seems like is buried in him so deep, that it feels as if it's part of someone else's memories.

Doyle says he did that unconsciously, during Loki's influence. She thinks, in all her sixty-five years of wisdom (and diamond-hard, seen-it-all intelligence shrink capacity), that upon being so harshly violated, Clint had reacted in the way he had been trained to if ever was compromised: by burying the softest parts of himself in the deepest places. By all accounts, Hawkeye wasn't even supposed to have soft spots; but Hawkeye was just a mask and Clint was the one wearing it. Clint was as human as the next guy… well, almost. But when you serve on his kinds of missions, with those kinds of risks, they teach you to relegate humanity on the back of the burner, where nobody can touch it. Hell, that had been what his initial training had been all about: burning the humanity outa him; and that wasn't the kind of shit he learned at SHIELD – it had been before that… or at least Clint thought so. No, no of _that_ he was sure. He had been trained before he joined SHIELD, and not in standard military boot-camp either.

All of it was worth scrap in the end. Loki ended up wearing Clint to prom and doing fuck-all he wanted with him, and no training in the world could have saved Clint from that.

The only result was that, after all was said and done, there were parts of his own life that Clint had trouble remembering, owning up to. Memories and specific details slipped away from him, blurred together, like faded old photographs.

…and parts of that maniac that still lingered, cold, like vices around his heart; whispers and memories that bled together and made up for horrible nightmares, sleepless nights and half-choked screams.

It wasn't the first time this had happened either. PSTD was a bitch but not exactly a one trick pony.

Clint had been caught in Yemen once. A mission gone to shit faster than he could blink and it had ended with him being holed for three weeks in a 1 star cell, with all the fun and games that entailed – pliers, hammers, screws and all the toys, the whole nine yards. He had suppressed himself then too. There was really no other way to resist. You had to forget that there was anything in you other than what you were trained for. All that that hard-edged training designed to strip him into a weapon and nothing more, it had come in handy then. He had regressed to it as if it was a fucking safe haven. So no, this was not his first rodeo, but he had not had so many blanks for so long, not even from his Middle East fuckfest.

But then again, Yemen had had nothing on the God of Motherfucking Daddy Issues.

Clint sighed, braced his hands on the sink and let his head hang low for a moment, trying to loosen his tension; failing. He was sick and tired of this shit. Had been since this thread first started tugging a few days after New York and he realized that there were blanks in his memories – like those red and green spots that you got after looking into the sun for too long; they just made everything blurry.

It had started at Phil's funeral. Clint hadn't attended; he'd watched the proceedings from high ground and allowed free reign to the maelstrom of emotions clawing at him from the inside.

Phil had been his SHIELD recruiter, his handler, his partner… his friend. Phil had been lots of important in ways that nobody except for Natasha had been to Clint in a long fucking time.

Phil had been killed by his own doing.

That was an illogical twist of guilt, according to Doyle. Felt fucking real enough to chafe though.

He got roaring drunk that night under Nat's supervision … and woke up with a scream lodged in his throat. He'd had nightmares before, but those were different. There were nightmares - and then there were memories. He'd known, instinctively, that what he had been dreaming of fell under that second category.

He remembered the compound the collapsed, the helicarrier… remembered lining kill shots with ease and precision, not a thing holding him back from killing people he'd known for years. His brain had always known what it took to kill whom, always – it was built and conditioned for cataloguing that kind of information. He'd remembered heat, days in the sun and pale skin that freckled, dark hair and bullets, and fire exploding right in his face.

Some of it he remembered, other things he didn't. He had seen the footage of himself in the helicarrier and Nat had filled the blanks with reluctance but clean cut precision when he asked. The rest remained elusive.

The next day he stole inside the archives and read up his file and mostly there was nothing new. Facts were not what he had been missing anyway, more like sensations, impressions from places. Faces that kept coming in and out of focus. _Who the fuck are you kidding Barton_ – one _face_. _One!_ There was nothing on his file to explain his flashbacks though. Nobody there with dark hair and brown eyes and a nose a little burned by the sun. Nothing there that would make him sound as anything more than an asset really. He hadn't even finished reading it – there was nothing on that file that Clint didn't already know about himself.

He could always go through Coulson's stuff and find out, but the mere thought of it made Clint shudder.

The slap of cold water brings him back to the present, in the middle of the night in his own apartment. He turns the water hot and stays still beneath the spray, the warmth loosening his muscles just a tiny bit, but not enough.

He's in and out in five, efficiency at its best. He's just finished drying off and is putting on his workout gear when he hears her behind himself.

"Clint…"

He knew that tone. He was starting to worry her. The guilt of it clenched a little. But he knew better than to pretend for her. Nat would see through it in a moment and take it even worse. Maybe even punch him for it.

"I think I'm in trouble, Nat." he says with a sigh. Natasha's scoff is more reassuring than it should be.

"I'm listening."

_Isn't she always…_

"I think there are some important things I'm not remembering well. Something that has got to do with Coulson… and another person… I don't know." He rubs a hand through his hair, as if hoping to abrade the thoughts into some kind of order.

Natasha is silent, and there's not even the hint of surprise in her eyes. Clint looks up from where he is cleaning his two automatic rifles and his hands still.

"You know." It's not even a question. She nods. Hope flares within him.

"Your doc thinks I should tell you. That you deserve to work through it yourself. That it would be better for you."

Clint gets up, moves closer. It's not a threat, it's a pleading.

"Come on Nat. I _know_ this is important, I feel it. It feels like I've forgotten my goddamn name, for fuck's sake. Just _tell_ me." but before he can even complete that sentences, it rushes straight through him, like a blow to the head. He has no idea why now and not before, what it was that broke the floodgate and finally un-constipated his mind.

He has no fucking clue, but it still knocks the breath outa him.

Clint waves and finds that he has to sit down. A headache so vicious blooms at the inside of his skull that Clint thinks a swing from Thor and his almighty hammer would have hurt less than this.

"Shit… oh holy hell!"

He scrambles madly to make sense. It's like waking from a dream and rehashing reality all over again as if you've never seen it before. How could he… how was it possible to forget something like that?!

"_Breathe,_ Barton!"

At Natasha's insistent tone, Clint becomes aware that she's been speaking to him and he hasn't been listening.

"Go through it slow." Nat tells him. She sounds calm. She should sure. "Don't rush. She is safe. I made sure of it. The op is still up and running and she is still classified as a high-priority resource. She's in Arizona, Phoenix and her detail is secure. Everything's fine."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he growls.

She should have told him. This wasn't fucking therapy, there was a person's life at risk – _his person's_ life! He couldn't just _forget_ about her. When he made that sentiment known to Natasha however, she still the way she usually does when she is processing something new.

"_What_?"

Natasha considers him. "You haven't requested updates on the status of that op in approximately 15 months."

Clint takes a moment. "What?" but this time, he speaks it softly. Incredulously.

He had abandoned her?

He had, hadn't he… He'd stopped demanding reports, harassing Coulson, checking in with her surveillance detail, following her from afar. He'd dropped it altogether.

Couldn't recall why at the moment. It felt stupid. Cowardly. It felt like betrayal and he was ashamed of it.

That particular thought turned him into motion, but before he could jump up and storm down to SHIELD headquarters at 3 in the morning and give everyone a heart attack or get himself shot, Natasha stopped him.

_You need to sleep_ she said. _And hash out what you do and don't recall, at this point_.

"The tech room will still be there tomorrow. And Hill might be more gracious towards letting you barge in if you don't have her woken in the middle of the night."

However, Clint only relents when Natasha hands him a little USB portal with the latest update reports and movements of one Rebecca Gordon , who is not in fact Rebecca Gordon at all, but that doesn't matter – she could be using any name, as long as she's alive and healthy and safe. That had been the deal: a life for a life; as asset that was the best they ever had had, in exchange for protection. For safety. He'd cut those conditions almost 6 years ago with Coulson, and Coulson had kept his word till the day he died. He had been the head of Marta's security detail from the start. Operation Curie, that was the official name. Coulson had chosen it. Told it was an apt choice for someone like Marta.

But then the bombing happened, and everything changed. For the last 2 years, Marta had been living alone, never knowing Clint Barton even existed, let alone that he had been Aron Cross, or Kenneth Kitsome before that.

He had hidden the memories of her deep within himself, to protect himself. He had trouble getting them back but he did in the end – they were still there. Marta would never get her memories back.

2 years since he had last been in the same room with her.

Marta Sheering had changed identities half a dozen time since then of course. Now she was calling herself Rebecca Gordon. It was unclear to the handlers of her operation why she was always on the move, always keeping small and slipping under the radar, staying as far away from big cities as possible. She didn't do anything illegal, apart from faking her documents and packing enough heat with her to level a small squad. SHIELD had no problem with that as long as she didn't get in trouble. They didn't have to understand her; they just had to keep her safe. If Coulson had understood, he had kept it to himself, like countless other secrets.

Clint understood it too. And the moment he realized that, he also remembered why he'd stopped watching over her: It was too fucking painful.

But that night, pain didn't matter. He opened the first file – surveillance videos from as far back as 3 months – and watched her go about her daily life. Her hair was longer, she was thinner and just as pale as ever. It felt like the air went missing in the room when he started recognising the patterns of her behaviour, but he didn't stop watching till he went through all of the surveillance work and light is dawning outside his window.


	2. Chapter 2

_AN: A little side-note. Clint remembering Marta, and himself when he was Aaron Cross_.

**2**.

It was strange, trying to conjure bits and pieces of foggy information. Like chasing shadows, you were never quite sure if you were right or if you were crazy. Sensations remained – they at least, were vividly present, just like half-remembered dreams you simply couldn't shake off. Her breath on his cheek, on his neck; muscle memory of her touch and where it used to make him shiver, the way she sounded when he kissed her in certain places, the way she used to say his name… over and over again, a strange name that Clint had not even remembered having.

Before Clint Barton and Hawkeye, before SHIELD, he had been Aaron Cross. And before _that_, someone else altogether.

After two weeks of not being able to be certain of anything, the absolute conviction of _this_ is disorienting as fuck… but then everything falls into place and he remembers with perfect clarity.

_Of course I was… I am…_

It's strange. It's like waking up.

He watches the security logs of the woman that used to be Marta Shearing (Marta Shearing, Ph.D., bona fide genius and a freaking cutthroat virologist on the run form the US government. Marta Shearing, the woman that fucking made him into what he was, his Frankenstein). She calls herself Rebecca Gordon, owns her new identity with ease, belongs in it. She has shed skin after skin in the two years they've been apart, like a snake (like a taught her to). He watches her live and he remembers himself. (Before this, they had been together 6 yeas, 14 weeks and one morning. He remembers it now, everything down to the time when he last saw her face to face.)

And yet, he is still amazed at how some things stick through everything. He is well aware that after that gradate that almost blew them both to hell, she would not recognize him anymore even if she were to look at him right in the face… but she still knows how to dismantle guns and put them back together with the same ease that she used to handle a microscope or a needle. She remembers how to handle herself in a crowd; she goes into a room and instinctively, first thing she does is look for the exits and catch the sightlines, never sitting with her back against the door.

Clint follows her movements on the screen of his computer, so familiar, so foreign at the same time, and he remembers the sheer fun he used to have teaching her all that shit. She had done so well those first few days but later on… Clint had known she would need more than just being tenacious. After they had escaped from Manila (God, it had been 8 years!) they had hopped from island to island and back again for almost 2 more years, before SHIELD took them in.

_I was hoping we were lost…_

Clint rubs at the spiking heartache behind his temple. He's been having migraines after New York. But now that he is lucid and there are no more corners of his mind hidden from his consciousness, it's almost physically painful remembering days in the hot sun with nothing but them together. Trying to relax her into concentrating, into conditioning her responses to outside stimuli the same way he had been conditioned, but gentler. Not a single bruise on her body from this. She doesn't have to know how to kill with her hands – couldn't really – but he does teach her basic self-defence and how to gain that fatal 1 second that could save her life if she's caught. If it ever came to one on one, she would never have a chance against other agents though; which had been why he handed her a gun and taught her to shoot.

Marta had soaked it all up. She was not so good with the physical side of things – it was too late to train her on it beyond the bare necessities. But the rest… she soaked up knowledge like she always had all her life. And she was always picking up things from him, even when he wasn't consciously trying to teach her.

She learned how to wipe down a place, how to prepare for a move, how to pack, how to dust a place when there was no time, what to look for if things weren't right. He taught her how to hide, _where_ to hide, how to blend in, how to disappear in a room behind a single person if she had to; how to run, how to fall and not break her neck… how to make bombs with what was under any sink (something which came easy to her because she knew more about chemistry than he would in three lifetimes; and it had amused and surprised him how creative she got), how to burn a place down with a toaster and a fork.

How to survive.

Tricks of the trade she had jokingly called his lessons and she had it in her even to laugh about it. And he remembers how in awe he had been then, of how she made herself fit for anything, everything. Like a smart-bomb, all he had had to do was point her in the right direction and shit got real.


	3. Chapter 3

_AN: Inspired by the scene at the opening of Bourne Supremacy.  
>A little flashback from the time between Aaron and marta toghether. I like writing those and there will be more as the story goes on<em>

**3.**

_Year: 2009  
>Time off the grid: 568 days and one morning<br>Location: Still lost… barely_

He can never explain it, how he knows when they are burned and have to move on. It's in the details that don't quite fit, the little things that tug at his senses. It's a rental car that doesn't make sense matched with a watch too expensive on someone's wrist, an improbable pair of shoes and a particular stance. Its gut instinct and cognitive recalibration and training so extensive (there a word for it; 'brutal' might be another one) that it was etched to the marrow of his bones. He can't explain it to someone like Marta, even though she understands just about everything else he tells her and her IQ could break a bank. In this she is a novice, even though they have been doing this run-and-hide for almost 2 years.

In truth, he doesn't even need to explain. The moment he stops the jeep at the bat and spots her red bikini in the distance, it only takes one look for Marta to realize that she needs to get a move on.

_One_ look and that's it. He could almost smile at that. At how casually she moves and how naturally she smiles, even though there is newborn tension in her frame and the rise of panic in her eyes. She says a hasty goodbye to her friends and they smile indulgingly, thinking that she is just another woman in love, eager to get back to her boyfriend. She is that too sometimes.

But not this time.

She gets in and Aaron gears the car into speed. Not too much - not enough to be noticeable, but enough to move along.

"Are you sure?" she asks immediately, and though she is straining to keep herself calm, not to freak out on him (always so careful, never wanting to show him that kind of weakness, but never deluding herself thinking he did not know it was there.) Aaron can feel the edge of her nerves of course; he can read her just as well as she can read him, maybe even better. They know each other in different ways.

"I am."

And he is. He'd spotted their hunter yesterday, by the beach, and today at the post office. That and everything else, everything he couldn't put into words – it was all the confirmation he needed.

The truth was, he really couldn't afford to be wrong.

"How? Where did we go wrong?"

Aaron is not sure he has an answer to her question though. His eyes go everywhere.

"Post office." Is his curt answer. Marta curses under her breath.

"I thought… I hoped they would leave us alone." She speaks it softly, almost with regret.

He knows the feeling. Knows what she means by it. But the truth is, Aaron had never allowed himself to think that way. He knew better. Especially after they had exposed the medical files on the LARX program and what it entailed, and Landy had mowed her way through the CIA and the Department of Defence… Neither he nor Marta had wanted to let program like LARX grow and fester; they had wanted to put an end to it, but that meant making enemies. The kind of enemies that knew how to hold a grudge.

"Let me take the wheel." She says then, mind already made up to be in the moment and nowhere else. They move in sync, like they have practiced over and over and over again. He's already squeezing over her before she even finishes her sentences and when she takes the wheel her hands don't shake, her eyes are steady, her jaw set. Her nerves are swallowed down, precision that he knows is second nature to her taking over, dethatching her emotions from the moment, allowing her to think. He should not find that as appealing as he does: it was this kind of compartmentalized thinking that got her in trouble in the first place, but the truth is, he told her to hone that skill. To clamp down on emotional responses because they impair her judgment and since her brain was her best weapon, she needed to use it to survive this.

"Where am I going?" her voice is not exactly calm, but she sounds sure. Sure _in him_.

It never really stops amazing him just how much clarity of purpose she has when _he_ is the focus of it.

"Take the next left and then keep to the road." Aaron says as he takes out the gun from his backpack and checks his watch, eyes everywhere, looking for that one face that will stand out to him.

Marta speeds up, her dark hair flying everywhere from her ponytail but she keeps her eyes steady on the road even when she comes too close to another car and clips it, her mirror shattering. She keeps going even though the oncoming buss doesn't stop for them - she accelerates, just like he taught her, and passes just in time.

He hears her murmured curse, and as he turns to check their back, he puts a calming hand at the back of her neck. Her pulse is flying. He knows her hands are sweating. But her focus is sharp despite it, maybe even because of it.

"You're doing great." he says, calm, steady. He knows that it settles her, when he speaks to her that way.

She scoffs and though her smile is tense, its genuine all the same.

"Hang on." is all the warning he has for the car barraging down a set of stone steps. He gets the strange urge to laugh as the Jeep jostles.

She can read his face even through a glance.

"Don't give me that look." She snaps, but the bite behind it is not as real as she makes it sound. More like a tease than a sting. "You're the one who taught me this shit."

He huffs, even as his eyes keep darting about. They are almost out of town now and the danger is receding, but they won't be safe until they get lost again.

"Yeah. Starting to regret that call." he says softly. "Your driving was insane enough before you learned new tricks."

But the truth is that she is getting so good at defensive and aggressive driving that if it came down to a chase he would calmly hand over the wheel to her and not even worry about it. She's taken to it even better than she took to shooting.

"Ok. As soon as we reach the woods we'll be clear." he says as the edges of the forest ahead of them start coming closer. Marta doesn't slow down, but the breath she lets out is long and the tension in her shoulders melts out of her now, making her look smaller somehow.

He feels like he should say sorry. He knows she liked that small town, like the beach and the people, and the sun, even though she was so pale that her skin never tanned, only blushed different shades of red and freckled a bit.

"Alright. Where to now?" she says then, looking at him expectantly, already past the town, already looking ahead. Aaron feels something tug hard somewhere beneath his diaphragm, something that coils and tightens, churning his insides. He knows that there is very little chance he will find someone that fits him better.

He leans in and kisses her cheek, because he can't get to her mouth without distracting her. He doesn't think he's ever loved anything this much.

But then again, he's never loved anything, period, not before her. He is sure of that. He would know if he'd ever felt so intensely about a single person before. It would stay with him, the same way the guilt and heaviness from what he's done for Outcome stays with him.

But this… this is unprecedented, a completely singular feeling, and Aaron knows he'll be carrying the imprint of it for the rest of his life.


	4. Chapter 4

_There's this speech that Hill gives the agent on the phone here tha tis taken word for word from Pamela Landy in Bourne Supremacy.  
>Yes i am paying tribute to each of those movies in turn ;D<em>

**4**.

He snaps the phone over his ear as soon as the clock goes 600 hours. She picks it up at the first ring. Not that many people know her private number. She'd be pissed.

He doesn't care.

"What can I do for you Barton?"

Those words, in that tone, were the opposite of an invitation.

"I was hoping you had some time for me."

He's sure she's doing three other things that very moment as she speaks to him.

"Time for what?"

"I'm free right now actually." Clint adds, without preamble. He feels Maria pause on the other end. His tone must have gotten through.

"That sounds ominous. Let me check my schedule; I'll get back to you in five."

He's waiting outside her office in three.

ooo

Hill looked him over with those steel-cold eyes of hers, missing nothing. There was nothing there to catch though. Clint held himself back, utterly still and impenetrable the way only someone like him could be. They knew each other – had fought back to back in at least five different occasions. Still, Hill was considering him now as if he was a stranger.

"So you mean to tell me that you want access to the files of Coulson's operation, even though you don't have the clearance for it."

"No. I'm asking you to check up on the status of an ongoing op that could have been compromised since Coulson's death."

The words fester in his mouth. He has to say them anyway. Clint doesn't miss the tightening at the corner of Hill's eyes. He is sure she doesn't miss the way he also tenses all over.

"And why should I do that?"

"The op is complicated." Clint explained. He knew Hill hadn't been briefed on it – with the chaos that was the clean up to an alien invasion she could hardly have had time for something like this. "Civilian watch duty, but the target is high priority."

Hill frowns. They have had very few cases like that. She is right to be puzzled.

"Why?"

"Marta Shearing is a scientist. She developed some interesting stuff before she fell off the grid about 8 years ago, presumably dead."

"Marta Shearing…" Hill mumbles the name and Clint notices recognition flaring in those cold eyes. "The scientist that developed the genetic enhancement for the Department of Defence. The one program after Project Rebirth that actually got stable results." Hill lists all this off as if she is reading it from a piece of paper. Her frown deepens as she does. "I didn't know we had her in custody."

Her eyes seemed to ask him _'How do you know?'_

"It's a long story." Clint says with a sigh. "Coulson and I were her initial contact. We brought her in."

And its close enough to the truth without being the actual truth. Only Coulson and Fury knew that one, and maybe Hill would know it too as soon as she shit-fest from New York settled down a bit and she had time to catch up with her paperwork as second in command of SHIELD, but until then, Clint was sticking to his cover.

"And you think the op has been compromised?" but her hand is already dialling her phone and she calls instruction to one of her assistants. Code name Operation Curie, Clint tells her, and not even 2 minutes later, the file is on the screen of her pad and she is accessing the codes to unlock it.

"I have to ask you to leave now." Hill says, in her clean commanding manner.

Clint doesn't budge.

"I am already aware of every detail of that op. I helped set it up and until 2 months ago I was co-running it." Little did it matter that he hadn't actually had a direct hand in it in over a year. Hill didn't need to know that. "I can access the file with my own codes, that was not what I wanted."

"Then what is it Barton?" She bites off, eyes never leaving the data on her screen, reading up on Marta as she snaps at him. The joy of multitasking. "Apart from wasting my time, what do you want?"

He remembered a time when he would have cracked a joke at that.

"I want you to call the field agent in charge and make sure the target is secure."

The truth was that he wanted a signal to be able to triangulate Marta's position so that he could go find her. And he wanted to know that SHIELD was still on top of its game even when its resources was stretched as thin as they had been stretching these past few days.

Hill stares him down. Clint doesn't so much as breath differently. In the end, he knows it will come down to trust. He showed his trust in her when he came here instead of doing this his own way. Now it's her turn.

She makes the call.

ooo

"I was brought in week ago… She has been off the grid for the last 32 hours." the agent confirms and it takes all of Clint's patience not reach over and smash the fucking screen down on the fragile-looking table.

_You're volatile_, Nat had told him, deadpan and honest, a couple of days ago. He had not fucked up on the job, but he had gotten into a bar fight right after, almost looking for trouble. Natasha had dragged his ass outa there, but the damage had been done already.

Volatile. Nice word. Good ring to it. Didn't really cover the wide spectrum of what Clint felt, but as far as _words_ go, that one was pretty close.

He clamped down on that hard. He needed to be on full alert right now. He needed control.

"She _what_?" Hill's question cracked like a whip and it had the agent wavering on the end of that line. "You are telling me that a full squad of trained SHIELD agents lost themselves a _civilian_? Is _this_ what you're telling me?"

The agent paled but had the nerve to confirm. Good for him. Hill really wasn't the kind to ask rhetorical questions. Clint wasn't even sure she knew what those were.

It didn't make it any easier.

"Has this happened before?" Hill asks, not patient enough to read through the file to know it.

Clint could tell her the answer: yes. He wants to know why this hadn't been called in, but it probably had and it had been skipped over, or the agents on the field were handling it at their discretion. Parameters were that the first 42 hours belonged to the field quad in charge of the op.

"Yes ma'am. According to mission logs, she does this every few months. Drops everything, relocates, starts over. We have almost lost her a few times."

"Almost?" Hill's tone is a clear opening. Spill it.

"Agent Coulson was able to keep up with her movements. He was the only one authorized to make contact, which is a good thing because anyone else and it would have ended bloody. That woman is either severely neurotic or paranoid as fuck… ma'am."

Hill's lips thin in irritation but it's just because the other agent can't see her. If he could, he'd already be regretting his burst of honesty.

Clint knows that the agent, whoever he is, is not wrong there, though. And he can even tolerate Hill's incredulity for it, she didn't know what exactly Marta was capable of when she spooked. The only person who knew about her in details was Coulson and maybe Fury, if Coulson had filled him in – and Nat because Natasha knew his every soft spot – that's how she defended them so efficiently.

Hill leaned forward, the aluminium glint of her eyes making her look almost as sharp as a dagger. You could practically smell military efficiency on her when she spoke.

"How long have you been working for SHIELD agent?"

"Four years ma'am."

She sharpens.

"If you ever want to make it to five, listen to me real close. Rebecca Gordon is a high priority target and she is to be handled with extreme caution. I want the perimeter of her usual hotspots secured, I want any evidence you find secured, and I want it done now. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir- ma'am."

"I am sending a recon agent on site. He will land in 30 minutes, which means you will call me back in 20, and when I ask you where we stand, I had better be impressed."

"Yes mam."

The line is cut before the agent can say anything else and that's when Hill turns to Clint, looking at him dead and centre with sharpshooter intensity.

"Anything more I need to know, Barton."

_No_, he wants to say.

But he can't leave it at that.

"She could be armed. In fact, I bet on it. She is a level-five shot and she knows how to disappear, so no baby agent is gonna be able to find her if she wants to stay lost."

Maria's perfectly-cared-for eyebrow arches at him.

"Sounds like more than your average civilian on all accounts."

It's a question even though its delivered flatly, but Clint is not in the mood to volunteer information. Hill senses it.

"You think something spooked her?"

"Personnel has been rotating." Clint forces a shrug. "That's probably why she got saddled with an agent so green he probably pisses grass. She made him, spooked, ran. It's her M.O."

Hill nods. "I'll send a team in to track her down."

"Send me and Romanov. We're not tied in anything else and we'll get it done by tonight."

But this conversation is a dead end and they both know it.

"You're not cleared for field operations." Hill says in a final tone that allows no breathing room.

"I am cleared for a recon job. Romanov can babysit me if necessary, you know that."

Now Hill is starting to look frazzled because it been a long day and she probably has no time for his bullshit when there is the whole of Manhattan to clean up, alien bodies to get off the streets, PR to handle and no Coulson to help with any of it, but hey, _his_ day - wait, make that his last three _months_ - have been a giant shit-sandwich too and he is not negotiating on this.

"You want me to send two A-list master assassins to track down one civilian?"

Irritation spikes like an arrow to the gut, but Clint holds firm to his control against it. This is not the time, the place and most certainly not the right fucking person either.

His tone is blank, steady. For someone's like Hill, it's enough to judge the vibrating danger beneath it the purposeful calm of it.

"It was A-list trackers that she was built to evade and she is pretty decent at it." _I made her that way_, a small voice adds in his head. _She made me and I made her and we both took a little bit from the other when we were together_. "You send in anyone less capable and it just lengthens the timeframe of having her missing – and gives that time to whoever else is looking for her and taking the trouble to do it _right_."

The thoughts jams inside his head. He can't stop them. Memories ask no permissions, they just barrage down and he has to keep a cool head until it's over. If Hill notices she doesn't mention it, but her eyes tighten at the corners.

"Very well; I will send Romanov, but you..."

"_I'm_ the target's initial contact, I'm the only one she'll even remotely consider trusting." And what does it matter if it's only half the truth, less even. Hill doesn't know that. "Believe me, anyone else and this will end in bullets and a concussion."

This second part is all true though, and he doesn't want it to go that way. Not that he fears for Natasha – that's ridiculous. Marta was good, but good doesn't even come up to scratch when Nat is concerned. Marta is the one that would end knocked out hard - Nat would be careful, but she is a survivor, just like Marta really, and the irony is, neither of them is particularly gentle.

The thought makes him even edgier.

"Barton!"

"Look, if Coulson were here, he'd tell you to give it the green light and let it go, and if Fury had the time, he'd tell you the same thing. Call him, run it by him. I'm gonna get geared up."

And he gets the fuck outa there, not waiting. He's not surprise Nat is already there, leaning casually against the wall.

"Where are we going?"

"Arizona, to start. Then we'll pick up the trail and move from there."

"She evaded her detail?" Nat frowns and smiles at the same time. She's impressed. Clint less so.

"Not bad for a civy; you should be proud." She says, as if to cheer him up. Who would ever have said it. Natasha is trying to get him to see the silver lining. That had usually been his thing.

"I'm more along the lines of concerned at this point, Nat."

Natasha doesn't say anything. His worry isn't so much that he won't be able to find her, but that someone else is going to find her first. There was a reason Marta had a protective detail around the edges of her life and it wasn't because just Marta had been Clint's bargaining chip - or rather, her security. Fury was a paranoid bastard that wanted to keep an eye on every possible threat, even if said threat was a tiny scientist that had no chance on ever repeating the success that had been the 'Outcome' agents like Aaron Cross. Because there were others out there besides SHIELD who were very interested in what Marta's brain could come up with, and others still, from deep within her past (and his), who were willing (and had tried hard for years) to kill her for that very same reason.

Clint had always suspected that the reason Fury was so intent on keeping Marta Shearing safe was not because that gained him Hawkeye as an asset, but because he was secretly hoping she would wake up one day decide she wanted to keep doing the science thing after all, launch herself back into some lab and start producing super-soldiers. Technically speaking, even the hope for it was worth it: in 70 years, Marta had been the only one with stable results that brushed up against what Erskin had done with project Rebirth during the war. And Marta had just been stretching her wings back then…

That was worth more than anything to select people.

Funny how some things worked out through time. Clint didn't care about that part at all at this point, but he could remember – with distressing clarity now - a time when he would rather see Marta dead, than back in a lab, doing to others what she had done to him.

The thought makes the ice around his heart solidify into something that chafed.

Natasha speaks to him from his left.

"Ready to take off in ten, Clint."


	5. Chapter 5

**5.**

The operation room is small and there are maybe four technicians running things and three field agents. He watches Natasha walk straight into the room and it takes her half a second to figure out where they stand. She is being introduced but really, Clint knows that the Black Widow doesn't need any introduction beyond those two words that are her name and her code both. And he knows she doesn't give a shit about pleasantries either.

"Let's do names later." Natasha says in that calm tone that puts the fear of god in normal human beings. Clint hangs in the shadow, far up in the corner, listening, a ball of nervous energy just waiting to blow loose. She can practically feel him building up.

"What's the target's last fixed position."

The room is silent. Her eyes scan it coldly.

"Phoenix, twelve hundred zulu. Last spotted in a train station, partial profile matches." Someone pipes in. A young techie with tick-rimmed glasses and wiry build. Its cursory, but she notices, young, ballsy, smart. Good call.

Coulson always had an eye for talent.

"Status? Wounded? Armed?"

"Alive. Mobile. Unknown." The same techie says.

"Where are our grids coming from?"

"SHIEDL Tactical-2. We can widen it if necessary."

"Do you have a Echelion package?"

She directs the question to the field agent that was on the phone with Hill this morning.

"…Yes."

His hesitation costs him. Nat's eyes get sharper and sharper.

"Why isn't it on?"

"We were waiting."

"For _what_?"

But there are no takes to that question.

"You are 32 hours behind on a high priority target. I'm gonna deal with why that is later. For now, I want everyone strapped in and giving it 110% or I will hear the reason why." A pause, half a second, just so that it sinks in. "That means _now_."

And just like a firecracker, everyone sets into their positions, scrambling to do whatever needed of them.

Two hours in, Clint picks up Marta's trail. He follows it with anxiety growing, trying to remind himself through the frenzy that he can't make contact with her, because she wouldn't know him… _but does that matter?_ It's still Marta; different from what she was, different name and with a different life, but he knows who she is beneath that. Would it be so bad if he…

_Yes it would._ All kinds of bad and immoral, and selfish. _I could go on…_ and the voice that says that sounds so suspiciously like Phil, that Clint shudders.

The problem is that Clint really can't remember why he decided to break contact in the first place. Well… yes he remembers. Of course he remembers – how could he fucking forget! Even after they came under SHIELD's wing and protection, she still got caught into the line of fire for him and Clint had had to watch her brush up with death one too many times, before he finally cut himself loose when he had the chance.

(…_'had the chance'_. Clint scoffed. What a way to say it! If by 'a _chance'_ was the only way Clint could put those circumstances 2 years ago, then it could only mean he was hopelessly impaired when it came to expressing himself. Words were a bitch sometimes – he doubted he could find any that would express the magnitude of the circumstances anyway.)

But staying away doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. …And that's _another_ lie! It _had_ been a good idea. It had been _the best_ solution for a problem that seemed to run in circles without end. So Clint had broken the circle.

But his need outweighed his reason now, and he wasn't quite as steadfast as he had been then. (This was also why he had stopped monitoring her himself: it had felt borderline cruel to have her always there, but never actually _with_ him.) Now he just wants her back… an inane need that buzzed under his skin, made him almost erratic. He was at his weakest in a long, long time and he missed her more than ever. She had always been a point of convergence for him, always, whether as Aaron, or Clint or half a dozen other identities they had lived through. She had always been the one he went to, to be put back together, slowly, gently. It was almost a built in response for him now, to look for her whenever he felt vulnerable.

_Emotional conditioning… _Clint thinks, not unkindly exactly, but cynically enough to shake himself out of the morose mood that had bitten into him_. Bryer would have loved this shit. _

The fun and games are over however, when Marta's trail ends abruptly at one parking lot, fifty miles out of the city. Her stashed cat was untouched; it took Clint one look around to identify at least five signs of a struggle and a tiny splatter of blood on the hood of a nearby car which had disturbed the dust gathering on its windshield.

He imagined her head being banged against it, and feels his insides solidify into ice.

"Nat…" His voice is harsh, cold. Natasha answers immediately. "Call in a red-02. We need and extraction teem STAT."

ooo

There is a surveillance recording that Clint watches as they wait for the their ride to pick them up. SHIELD had bugged her apartment – and Clint hates that they have to, but mostly the angles are on the front door and the windows and exits – which admittedly, are not that many because her place is tiny; she keeps it simple and she keeps is small, (just like they always did when they were together – but that is an unwilling thought that hurts.) The apartment is bare except for a few necessities and he can spot the go-to bag on one corner, neat and within easy grasp from three different angles, ready to be taken in a dead run if need be.

How is it possible that she remembers how to do this, but cannot remember his face if he were to stand right in front of her?

But then again, Clint knows the answer to that. After all, he's seen it in someone else. And though Marta cannot possibly compare to Bourne and the extent of his amnesia or even the causes behind it (snapping from pressure because you had a whole wagon of issues, not least among them some pretty intense recalibrating training, is not the same as almost taking a gradate to the face), but still, the situations are echoes of each other.

And just as Clint is thinking that, Marta bursts through her front door, looking harassed and frantic. (His hands tighten on the pad; his heart actually tightening in his chest as if he were a teenager with a crush and not a grown, world-class assassin, for fucks sake.) She is jittery as she paces back and forth, hands going through her hair and eyes darting everywhere. He can see that she is itching to drop everything and run, but she second guesses. Her brain is an analytical one – Clint knows that she was probably listing the possibilities of her own paranoia as she paced front and back in her living room.

Its hard doing this when you don't know what you're running from. Especially for someone like her, who was the strangest mix of instinctual action and clinical, factual precision.

It's in moments like these that his remorse and shame mix and roar like beasts; he can't _believe_ he left her alone.

The guilt eats at him.

But not for long. He watches her from the small pad in his hands as she goes still, rigid with tension. She's made up her mind.

A second later she darts about with new purpose. She's not crying or fretting; she is packing. Doesn't bother with a wipe-down and that is what truly speaks of how frightened she must be (something in him echoes with it, a protective instinct that had grabbed him somewhere in Manila years ago and never relented). She jams a fork in her toaster, wedges it in; (Clint can feel the beginning of a smile trying to tug at a corner of his lips, despite himself; its Mumbai all over again) grabs rolls of whatever papers she can get her hands on and jams them into the toaster beside the fork. She wraps herself in a warm dark coat, gathers her hair up and puts on a knit hat that she fishes from a cupboard - it has blonde whips of hair sown into the rim, changing her appearance in 13 seconds when there is no time for a dye job. Her hair never did take on to colors well anyway: too dark, too thick. She pulls the stove away from the wall, kicks the gas line free and coughs as she moves away and activates the toaster and then leaves, her emergency bag safely around her shoulders and spares not so much as a single glance for the apartment and the life she leaves behind.

She is in and out in 2 minutes flat. A real pro. If he weren't so worried, he'd be proud of her.

Not 10 second after Marta has closed the door behind her the building's fire alarm blasts at full power. A minute after that, her kitchen bows up, taking with itself the entire apartment and erasing any sign of her ever being there. And Clint knows that she didn't chose that apartment casually, knows that she likes that it was first floor; that nobody would get hurt by the fire – which, besides the initial explosion, proceeds surely, but slowly, giving time to everyone in the small building to get the fuck outa there.

But despite the easy efficiency (perhaps because of it), something screams wrong at Clint as he watches this particular moment over and over. Something that is instinctual, personal. Something entirely about _her, _about Marta_,_ that does not fit. It takes him some time but eventually Clint zeroes in on it: it's not what she did – it's what she _didn't_ do.

She left nothing behind. Not even a look. Nothing. It wasn't always like this, Clint thinks, and he notes it because he knows it's important. It was never quite so clinical as this.

And it eats at him that he doesn't know what it means… because he doesn't know her anymore.

The realization is a slap to the face.

He'd never thought himself lost to her, even though she did not remember him anymore. Likewise, she had never been truly lost to him – it seemed stupid to even think it: she had _made_ him, saved his life, taught him how to be a functional human being in a world that didn't involve bullets. How could she ever be anything but a part of him? They were _ingrained_ into each other, for better or worse – it was impossible to go through what they had gone through and not end up like that.

But it had been almost 2 years since he was in the same room together, interacting with each other. And time has the fucking ability to mould things into different shades.

ooo

Clint has not set foot on any of SHIELD's helicarriers since he's been back and he sure as fuck will not until he can stop having flashbacks on what he did the last time he was in one. It's bad enough that the memories assault him whenever and wherever they like without a single fucking consideration for the moment or the situation he's in. He's not going back to the scene of the crime, not if he can help it.

The queenjet is not that different though… and Clint is barely holding himself together. Its just sheer determination that keeps him from fraying. That and the thought of where they are going and who they are facing…

_Fucking A.I.M._

It's as if they had been waiting for her to make a single false step. Just one. But Clint knew the truth: it wasn't a question of skill, not always. As a sniper, the best lesson he had to give was in patience: if you persevere long enough, your enemy is gonna make a mistake. That's all it takes.

The trap had been set a long time ago. All they had to do was wait for Marta to step into it.

"Brought you your care package." Natasha says as she passes by him on her way to the pilot's seat. The bag lands heavily in front of him. The decidedly metallic thud that it gives as it lands catches even Tony's attention on the other side of the screen. He's sitting in his lab, working on something or other, a screen beside him running diagnostics for the hack that JARVIS is about to perform. Natasha had called a favour apparently. Clint hadn't asked.

Clint nods his thanks to his partner, doesn't even bother with 'how did you know'. Tony however isn't very experienced with shit like this.

"Not sitting sniper on this one Barton?" Tony throws at him. It's not even a question, not really.

"No."

Its dry enough that it gives even Tony pause. If it had been in Clint's choice they wouldn't have involved him, them but they need tech support – _decent_ tech support and having JARVIS run your hacks for you was as good as it could possibly get.

Truth is that Clint doesn't want SHIELD crawling all over this. (Coulson's absence is starting to tear at him in whole new ways, but he has to fucking concentrate.) It's getting outa hand as it is – the last thing he wants is for more people than necessary to know about Marta, and who exactly she is to him. Last time that happened, she had almost died for it. …and the time before that as well, and even the one before that…

(_Love is for children_. He had heard Nat say that once. Clint had wondered once or twice, just how right she was. You could be _in love_ and still know it was the wrong place to be, couldn't you? He had believed that once. Believed it enough to act on it.)

Clint starts attaching the weapons on his person and from the silence and the burn of sharp eyes on the back of his neck, maybe it wasn't Clint's tone that shut Stark up but the contents of his bag. Three automatic pistols – one for each thigh and another between his shoulders - silencers, ammo, knives and gas bombs, explosives. He straps it all on his person with the same ease most people put on their clothes.

"You planning on leveling that place up Barton? I thought that was my job. Why wasn't I invited?"

"Stark, pay attention. Out priority are the hostages, so we need eyes in there as soon as possible." Natasha says smoothly. She is picking up right after him and Clint has never been more grateful for her knowing him so well. "After you get JARVIS to overrun the security system, feed the location of the hostage to us. We need to know the full layout of the compound so we know where to look."

Its banter from there on, but though his tone is light, Tony's eyes are anything but. Clint doesn't like the way Stark looks at him - as if he is already halfway through figuring this out.

Which is about right, of course. Tony knows fish when he smells it, but hey, no big, no problemo, he can handle this. And though he can't know if this is just Barton being weird after the whole Loki debacle type-thing or Barton being weird because someone important to him _personally_ is in that compound, in some dungeon somewhere - well at the moment that's irrelevant. Tony can try to meddle in with the two master assassins strapped with enough ammo and explosives to take out a city block, _or_ he can do what he does best: cover up their fine asses, and steal this show… and see what's got Barton's panties in such a vicious twist. He didn't agree to have Jarvis take over the cameras and operating systems just because of shits and giggles, after all.

Judging by the glint in Romanov's eyes, she is onto him though. So Tony winks at her and starts talking code and hacks and layouts.

30 seconds later JARVIS has triangulated the compound, Hawkeye has connected JARVIS to the mainline of its wireless system manually and the Tony-miracle is complete, because within 4 minutes and 23 seconds, JARVIS officially _owns_ that building. And there it is: the only one person in this A. I.M. that is currently tied and gagged in a room without windows. And low and behold, it's a damsel in distress.

_So predictable…_

Just as Tony relays the damsel's coordinates, the first explosions shoot the electrical system to hell, plunging the whole compound into darkness.


End file.
